Alright. Serious answer. I want a job that challenges me every day. One where I will never be able stop learning and growing and developing new skills. I want a mentor to teach me and to be surrounded by capable and creative people that I can bounce ideas off of. I don't want to live in a bubble. I want people to tell me straight up when my shit is ugly and doesn't work. I want to the job and the people and clients around me to push my creative boundaries to create superior work. I do not want a job that forces me to deal with office politics or write reports to management. I want to do the work and move onto the next project. Planning, yes. Bullshit busy work reports, no. I think that data and improving workflow is important but writing a 3 page essay that no one reads or analyzes is bullshit. I want to be able to say the word bullshit at work without getting written up. I want a relationship where my partner supports me but we live individual and separate lives and we are both okay with that. I want to fuck and cuddle and fuck some more and be able to have alone time. I want someone who is as ambitious or more ambitious as me and will never let me slip back into a lazy or drug fueled lifestyle. I want someone who I respect and adore and love and can give them exactly what they need. I want someone I love for who they are not for what they could be if they tried. I want someone who loves me for me and doesn't try to change my personality. They can push me to be better but I like being loud and abrasive and drunk sometimes. And I think that is okay. I want someone that can be loud and abrasive and drunk with me. Even if it's noon on a Sunday.
You seem to have very defined ideas of what you want in a job, and I envy that. I seem to mostly learn what I don't want by doing it and then disliking it. Is that how you've formed these standards, or do you just know what you need in order to survive/thrive in a workspace? Yes. It's important to have someone you can drink with if that's what you like to do. One of my favorite drunken Tweets was, "Sometimes I just want someone I want delete my tweets with tomorrow." The idea behind it being that I like to get drunk and then text stupid embarrassing things to Twitter and then the next morning delete them all while in bed recovering. I want someone I can go out and have a fun time with and then review and feel just a tiny bit chagrined about with the next morning.
Yes, it basically all comes from what I don't want to do and then just rephrased to be more positive. Take my desire for a mentor or creative coworkers. I work upstairs in the tech department even though I'm doing video editing, graphic design, web design, frontend coding. Why am I surrounded by soldering irons and audio chips and broken batteries and engineers? Because management doesn't know what they do either so they hide us all away up here. No one knows what I do. I take care of every department (web, marketing, production, tech, sales) but they don't understand the skills I have. They just know I'll get it done. The problem is getting it done doesn't help me grow or get better. I can deliver an ugly ass powerpoint or a gorgeous one and they won't know the difference. It makes it hard to deliver something worthwhile when you don't have any expectation or feedback. I know when things don't work, but don't know how to fix them. Sometime's I'll disappear for an hour and go grab drinks with some old shithead friends of mine in order to have some sort of brainstorming atmosphere for whatever task is at hand. When drinking with unemployed drunks at noon in a dive bar is a better creative atmosphere than your office, that's a problem. So yeah. That's pretty much how I get my desires. As for the deleting drunk tweets. My goodness, I know that feeling all too well. I have a video still floating around of me freshman year of college, drunk, just talking about my cool lighter. I'm massively drunkenly adorable but still. That slight shame that you feel after a drunken night is natural. If it happens too much or your sober self esteem starts being affected then maybe it's time to take a closer look. But being goofy or saying silly stupid things is fun and it's real. I totally get the desire to have someone share that with you. Your SO should be experiencing that same shame with you, not looking at you from the outside. I like that a lot.
I was going to reply to your original comment since I feel much the same way, but this statement here is particularly helpful. I often feel lost, like I'm spinning without direction and find myself unsure what I want out of life. At those time it's much easier for me to identify what I don't want, than what I do. From there I can narrow things down a bit. This takes some time however, as it requires thinking, reflection and experimentation but a path, or at least a direction, usually surfaces.Yes, it basically all comes from what I don't want to do and then just rephrased to be more positive.
You just have to restructure your thinking to be optimistic and happy. People like that shit. I would bitch and moan all day if I could but it's much more fun to pretend you have your shit together, have everything under control and all is fine and dandy. Plus sometimes it tricks yourself into thinking you actually do have your shit together when you're really flailing.
This reminds me of the maxim "The best way to be happy is to simply decide to be happy" While initially this was confusing and nonsensical to me I've found it to be more or less true. Perspective plays a large role in how we approach and feel about things.